Looking Back On This Week’s Daily Tips

1.What factors predict that a startup is likely to be successful? After have following the path of thousands of private companies, Zirra has narrowed it down the six most important factors: Market, Product, Team, Vision, Execution, and Momentum. In this example, Ola’s gifted team and excellent momentum are making up for an “OK” product. [Read here for Zirra’s Company Analysis Report on Ola Cabs]

2.Avoiding Tech Fake News: As with politics, Tech coverage is bound to have some fake news in it. By that we don’t mean there’s a farm of teens in Macedonia producing systematic fake titles about Google and Facebook. We’re talking about the major news and tech outlets. By no means are we claiming that they deliberately publish fake news in order to fool readers. However, sometimes they lack the time and resources to produce a balanced article about a tech company or a product. There are two major reasons for this (1) A lack of time and resource from one side, and an abundance of incoming news bringing reporters to take the easy way out, counting too much on PR and not talking other sources in order to get a critical point of view; (2) They want to benefit a source who gave them a good story, so they are ready to disregard critical aspects of a product or a company related to this source, or to go as far as initiating a positive article. The lesson is – take every tech article with a grain of salt. And, always search for critical thought among your network of experts.

3.Apptopia and SimilarWeb are two tools which can provide you with engagement intelligence about different web and mobile services. SimilarWeb grew from websites and web applications into mobile, while Apptopia was founded as a mobile app intelligence provider which can supply data on downloads and usage. However, we at Zirra recommend double checking with Google Play and Apple’s App Store for data on downloads and recent reviews to get the full picture, as SimilarWeb and Apptopia present only a part of the situation. [How we used SimilarWeb and Apptopia to analyze Houseparty app]

4.Was Uber affected by the #deleteuber campaign on Twitter and Facebook, following its decision not to join the taxi drivers’ strike against immigration ban? And, was Lyft the ultimate winner? Using data provided by Apptopia, Uber is suffering a slight decline in their app store ranking since the strike on Saturday. Lyft is clearly gaining a great momentum, but on Monday it saw the beginning of a decline.